You can’t say I don’t try to listen to what the other guy has to say. For six weeks, I’ve been looking for someone associated with Plano Future to talk about why this group, juiced by the bullhorn of social media, is so angry with its hometown government.

Phone calls and emails to group founder Jim Dillavou got me nowhere. Only after I wrote about the suburb’s nasty political struggle -- which Plano Future is at the heart of -- did I get a callback.

Spokesman Allan Samara told me Dillavou doesn’t like dealing with the press, so Samara was calling in his stead to set me straight on Plano Future. He followed up with a two-page email detailing the group’s grievances and agreed to an interview.

So why is this suburban “Who’s on first?” routine worth my time, much less yours?

It matters because this loosely organized group with nebulous membership is playing havoc with almost every issue Plano faces. Plano Future’s decibel level far exceeds its actual size and significance. But with a mailing list of thousands of residents who may not be paying close attention to their municipal government, Plano Future is driving -- and often distorting -- this suburb’s development story.

Any reasonable suburban dweller would sympathize with some of what bugs Plano Future. I sure do, having previously lived in Rockwall during the years when cars and cement poured in, turning the sleepy little town into an overstuffed suburb.

No doubt traffic congestion and development must be managed. But digging in against the reality of 2018, as Plano's vocal minority has done, is foolish.

The trouble began in October 2015, when the city council approved the Plano Tomorrow plan, the first attempt since 1986 to handle redevelopment in a city that is nearly built out.

The majority of the council felt they listened carefully to all citizens during the two years it took to craft the plan, even though they knew not everyone would agree with their conclusions. Hundreds of residents contended that the plan would urbanize and degrade Plano's housing, schools and quality of life.

With Plano Future in the lead, residents submitted a petition with more than 4,000 signatures demanding the council repeal the plan -- or let voters decide its fate. The city secretary declared the petition “insufficient” and the council moved forward.

Plano faces big traffic challenges as booming suburbs to the north create additional pass-through congestion. An analysis of annual traffic enforcement shows three of every five stops involved a non-Plano resident. That points to the real growth in Collin County -- Frisco, Prosper, McKinney, Celina and Allen, whose residents pass through Plano on their way to jobs in Dallas.

(Smiley N. Pool/Staff Photographer)

But Plano Future did not. A group of citizens filed a lawsuit that has dragged on for nearly three years, though that hasn’t stopped the city from implementing its master plan.

Dillavou, among Plano Future's leaders, made clear in our conversation that reconciliation, or even compromise, can happen only if the city council sees the error of its ways with the Plano Tomorrow plan. “It’s the city that’s the problem,” he said. “They need to start listening to the citizens.”

Plano Future has gained its clout not from the lawsuit itself but from those 4,000 signatures on the anti-Plano Tomorrow petition. The contact information alongside each signature provided a ready-made distribution list for Plano Future’s version of things.

Dillavou’s group is allied, at various times, with other small but equally dissatisfied organizations. The Collin County Republican Party also has its hand in the discontent, and conservative Empower Texans’ name is thrown around frequently in conversations about apartment plans and residential density.

Stir this mess together and you’ve got The Angry Crowd, aka the Party of No, responsible for creating an unfocused but high-pitched anxiety that has led residents to believe, for instance, that billions of apartments are coming to Plano.

Pressed about Plano Future’s use of scare tactics, Dillavou contended, “I don’t believe that’s the case,” then immediately shifted to, “We didn’t want to turn the whole city into Uptown. That’s what the people who wrote the Plano Tomorrow’s vision was.”

Dillavou kept trying to convince me that he and his group aren’t anti-apartment, but apartments came up again and again in his remarks. Challenged about whether the population and apartment numbers are actually skyrocketing, his response was, “it’s coming.”

He also noted his group’s influence in getting two freshmen council members, Anthony Ricciardelli and Rick Smith, elected last year with campaigns that railed against apartment-dense projects.

Because so much development has happened under Mayor Harry LaRosiliere’s watch, he’s often Plano Future’s target. At a council meeting in late July, a Plano Future leader was escorted out of the chamber after he ended his remarks, addressed to the mayor, with “jackass.”

LaRosiliere notes that the annual survey of citizens has remained pretty consistent since he joined the council, with 94 percent saying they are satisfied or extremely satisfied with their city’s services.

The mayor, who laughs that he is “working on developing an even thicker skin,” maintains that unhappy residents’ concerns are valid, but sometimes arguments are exaggerated.

“Every trail comes back to apartments,” LaRosiliere said. “They say, ‘apartments are the reason for traffic, apartments are the reason for crime.’ It’s easy to make that one reason the catchall for everything.”

Because so much of Plano's development, including Legacy West, has happened under Mayor Harry LaRosiliere's watch, he's often the target of those digging in against the reality of 2018.

(Vernon Bryant/Staff Photographer)

The mayor noted that an analysis of annual traffic enforcement shows three of every five stops involved a non-Plano resident. That statistic points to the real growth of the last decade or so -- Frisco, Prosper, McKinney, Celina and Allen, whose residents pass through Plano en route to their jobs in Dallas.

By comparison, Plano’s growth in population and apartment units has been relatively stable. Folks who are frustrated now either don’t remember or weren’t paying attention back in the 1990s and 2000s, when Plano experienced the kind of boom that its northern neighbors are now boasting.

After spending a lot of time the last six weeks talking to residents, reading the city’s recent history and watching archived council meetings, here’s the Plano I see: The pro-growth camp can't wait for the next challenge while the anti-growth people cling to a fantasy from the 1980s. In the middle are a lot of quiet people who understand both points of view but are mostly trying to adapt to the change.

If only The Angry Crowd would step up and work on solutions with the same zeal it’s worked on fighting city hall.